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Editor’s Note: This story is part of ICT’s new powwow guide set to release summer 2023. Include your powwow or a powwow near you by filling out this form.
Powwow season is in full swing. What better way to celebrate the in-person gatherings full of delicious food, laughter, and dancing than to catch up with powwow dancer on their prep, what they did during the pandemic, and more.
Danni Okemaw
Tribe: Anishinabe Nation and Swampy Cree
Dance style(s): Jingle dress and fancy shawl
Danni Okemaw has been dancing since she was three years old from hip-hop and contemporary ballet. Prior to 2015, she would travel with her family for months on dance trials, but she faced leg and foot injuries that doctors said would affect her stamina and technique.
“I took it very hard from 2015 to the pandemic. I felt very isolated. I wasn’t making the best choices for myself or my health,” she said.
But when the pandemic happened in 2020, Okemaw’s perspective shifted to begin training again. She started going to the gym, making training plans and putting together the outfits that she put away. READ MORE — Kalle Benallie, ICT
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They should be called the Cardiac Cats because the Florida Panthers have a flair for the dramatic when it comes to winning. Now the team led on offense by Mathew Tkachuk, Serge Bobrovsky in net and Brandon Montour, Mohawk, on defense, is on their way to the Stanley Cup finals.
The Panthers closed out the series sweep on Wednesday over the Carolina Hurricanes when Tkachuk scored the game winner in a 4-3 win with only five seconds remaining on the clock in the final period.
Montour, who was on the ice at the time, as he has been for so many big goals during this historic run to the cup final, was the first to leap onto the assistant captain in celebration. It has been a record-breaking season for Montour who set the record for most goals by a defenseman in Panthers’ franchise history and he set the record this season for most game winning goals.
His six goals continue to lead all defensemen in the Stanley Cup playoffs and it is a record he will likely own at the end of the playoffs whether he scores another goal because the next defender on the list still playing hockey is teammate Gustov Forsling, who has two. READ MORE — Miles Morrisseau, ICT
The Montana governor signed a flurry of legislation in the past two weeks which included a few high priority bills from the Montana American Indian Caucus.
Gov. Greg Gianforte signed both the Montana Indian Child Welfare Act and the Indian Education For All bill into law earlier this week. The first bill secures Indigenous family protections in the state and the second revises how Native history is taught in schools.
Both bills were sponsored by Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D- Box Elder, who had fought throughout the session to ensure that these issues involving Montana’s Indian Country were being addressed at the state-level.
Montana is the latest state to codify the Indian Child Welfare Act into state law, after the Wyoming legislature passed its own bill earlier this year. A main push for getting this bill into law came from the pending Supreme Court Case involving the federal ICWA, Brackeen v Haaland, which could change how ICWA works throughout the nation. READ MORE — JoVonne Wagner, ICT and MTFP
Bernadette Demientieff used words that are disturbing to Corporate America. She told shareholders: “Travelers is associated with past and current controversies that have alleged racial impacts on stakeholders. We believe these controversies are under-addressed, which opens the company to potential legal, reputational, and regulatory risks.”
Legal, reputational and regulatory risks are words that can sink a company’s future profits – and limit the rewards that stockholders hope to earn.
Demientieff is executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee and she carried a message from elders and communities some 4,300 miles to the general shareholder meeting Wednesday in Hartford, Connecticut. She was invited to present her case against oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by the Trillium Asset Management ESG Global Equity Fund.
“We heard something we’ve heard before in corporate engagement, which was that Travelers won’t insure in the Arctic,” said Kate Finn, Osage, executive director of First People Worldwide. Travelers told the Gwich’in Steering Committee in 2020 that the company’s insurance underwriting in the Arctic would be “de minimis” or a minor matter. “So what the Gwich’in Steering Committee is asking for is no insurance in the coastal plains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” READ MORE — Mark Trahant, ICT
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“Gone Native” is a five-part series of digital shorts that use comedy as a way to educate people about some of the microaggressions that Native people experience. It was created by writer Joey Clift in partnership with Comedy Central. ICT’s Paris Wise sat down with Joey and Comedy Central’s VP of Social Impact Erika Soto Lamb. Take a look.
Brian Bahe is a comedian with heritage from the Tohono O’odham, Hopi, Navajo tribes. He joined Aliyah Chavez in the studio for an interview.
It’s been three years since George Floyd was murdered by the police in Minnesota. So what lessons have been learned? Minnesota Sen. Mary Kunesh chairs the People of Color and Indigenous Caucus in the state Legislature.
BOA VISTA, Brazil — Until two months ago, Cartier’s website showed Yanomami children playing in a green field.
The French luxury jewelry brand said it was working to promote the culture of the Indigenous people and protect the rainforest where they live, in a vast territory straddling Brazil and Venezuela. But the project that the site described protecting the Amazon never took place. And Cartier published the photo without the approval of Yanomami leadership, violating the beliefs of a people who had been living in almost total isolation until they were contacted by outsiders in the 1970s.
Some of the Yanomami and their defenders praise Cartier’s promotion of Yanomami causes. However, advertising by one of the world’s biggest jewelers with images of an Indigenous people devastated by illegal gold mining has some complaining of greenwashing, a corporation promoting its own image by supporting a cause.
“How can a gold jewelry company, which we, the Yanomami people, are against, use the image of the Yanomami?” asked Júnior Hekurari, a member of the Indigenous group and head of the Yanomami’s health council. READ MORE — Associated Press
- Indigenous missing person cases get researchers’ attention: Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Omaha will be using a model first developed for that state to address data collection gaps across multiple law enforcement jurisdictions
- Cases for killing eagles decline as wind turbine dangers grow: US Fish and Wildlife Service field agent numbers are at historical lows amid growing concern that a proliferation of wind turbines to feed a growing demand for renewable energy is jeopardizing eagle populations
- Writers strike hits home for Indigenous TV shows, films: Native writers among those walking the picket lines amid demands for better working conditions and pay
- Ojibwe chef opens restaurant on Madeline Island
- Oakland University becomes 1st US campus to return land use to Native American community
- Debt ceiling explained
We want your tips, but we also want your feedback. What should we be covering that we’re not? What are we getting wrong? Please let us know. dalton@ictnews.org.
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